Moonwhisper knelt on bare dirt where the grove used to stand. Her white hair fell across her shoulders as she pressed a palm to the ground. Nothing answered. No hum, no green pulse, no memory of the dances her kin once traced across this earth. She was the last white-haired one, and the land had forgotten them. She needed a rooted piece of the old grove to teach the soil what to grow again. A seed. A cutting. Any living thread. She had none. She had searched every hollow and stream bank for a season, and the grove had left nothing behind. At her chest, the talisman warmed. Its lunar stone caught a pale light even in daytime. She lifted it and turned the runes with her thumb, the way her mother had shown her once. The talisman could hold power. It could not make life from nothing. A cluster of small wings brushed her cheek. Four fairy folk hovered close, their skin glowing soft pink, blue, gold, and lavender. They pointed together, insistent, toward the mossy roof of the cottage at the wood's edge. Moonwhisper stood. She had lived in that cottage her whole life. She had never climbed the roof. A voice landed behind her. "You've been looking down. It's been growing up." She turned. Lysander Willowbreeze stood barefoot in the grass, green hair tousled, arms folded like a boy who had waited too long to be noticed. He was the forest's caretaker, and he had avoided her since the grove died. Seeing him now made her jaw tighten. He had known something. "Growing what," she said. He tilted his chin at the cottage. "Climb." She crossed to the porch and pulled herself up the carved beam. The roof was thick with moss and vine. Near the crooked chimney, half hidden under a curl of ivy, a single sapling had rooted itself into the shingles. Its bark was pale as bone. Its leaves were the shape she had only seen in her mother's weavings. Moonwhisper's breath caught. A seedling from the old grove. It had drifted here on some wind years ago and taken hold above her head while she searched the ground. She cupped the small trunk. "How long?" "Six winters," Lysander said from below. "I didn't tell you. I wasn't sure it would live." She pressed the talisman against the sapling. The runes flared. The stone drank the sapling's faint pulse and held it, steady, a rooted link she could carry. She worked the roots free from the shingles with careful fingers. Moss came away in her hand. The sapling sighed and settled into her arms, alive, hers. Below, the fairy folk spun in a bright ring. Lysander did not smile. "You have your link," he said. "But the ground you mean to plant it in isn't empty anymore. Something moved in when the grove left. You'll have to answer to it first."

Moonwhisper climbed down from the roof with the sapling cradled against her ribs. Its pale roots dangled over her forearm. The talisman at her chest pulsed in time with the small tree, thread thin. Lysander watched from the grass, arms still folded. He had kept the sapling's secret for six winters, and she had not yet decided what to do with that. Right now she had a smaller problem, and it could kill everything. "The link won't hold a hard road," she said. "One stumble and the stone loses it." Lysander uncrossed his arms. "Then don't stumble." "That isn't a plan." She lifted the talisman. The lunar stone flickered when she tilted it, the sapling's pulse skittering like a moth. A day's walk to the dead grove. Roots, stones, streams to cross. Any jolt could scatter the link, and she would have nothing left to plant. The four fairy folk swept in from the eaves, pink and blue and gold and lavender. They circled the sapling, then darted toward the small glass building behind the cottage. Moonwhisper had passed it a thousand times without opening the door. She followed. Lysander came after her, quiet. Inside, on a low bench, sat a domed case the size of a lantern. Its frame was gold, its panels clear. Green and rose runes ran along the base. A hinged door stood at the front, small enough for a child's hand. The fairy folk pressed their palms to the glass and looked back at her. "My mother's," Moonwhisper said. She had forgotten it was here. Lysander stepped closer. "It cradles what's inside. Nothing gets through the frame. Not weather, not a fall." She set the sapling on the bench and opened the little door. Her hands shook. She lowered the roots into the soil cup and pressed them down. The pale trunk fit under the dome with a finger's room to spare. She closed the door. The runes along the base warmed and settled to a steady glow. She pressed the talisman against the glass. The stone's flicker smoothed. The sapling's pulse ran clean now, held between the dome and the rune. She lifted the case by its handle and shook it, once, hard. The light did not stutter. Her shoulders dropped. "It holds." "It holds," Lysander agreed. He did not sound relieved. She looked at him. "Say it." "You can carry the sapling now. That was the easy part." He nodded at the door. "Whatever moved into the grove has had six winters to settle. It will feel the link the moment you cross the tree line. It will come for it." Moonwhisper tightened her grip on the handle. The sapling glowed steady inside its glass. She had a living thing to plant, and something waiting to take it from her.